Tuesday, October 12, 2010

From Chai to Coffee....

At work my days are divided into coffee breaks now. Each coffee break is a community affair and is observed with punctuality and efficiency. It reminds me of the ritual in college when girls would bunch up to go to the ladies room all chirpy and giggling. On similar lines the coffee breaks are an essential part of the warming up and bonding process. The first one is in the morning around 9am, the warm-up coffee break where people meet to greet each other and discuss their modes of travelling - cab or metro. Then follows two hours of work and more work which tires further, thus another coffee break at 11.30 ish. That break is to discuss the progress of the work so far or simply to discuss who all are present or on leave in office today or will be leaving early.

Thus continues the 10-15 mins of coffee/tea/lemon tea sipping. The coffee vending machine expends the sweetest imaginable coffee. It is so sweet that it makes a corporate HR team seem bland. The measure for the cup of coffee is variable according to the demands of the intaker- either full, half or leave-it-if-its-too-much options. Apparantly one of our collegues discovered that if you press the 'soup' button it dispenses black tea.

Then it is back to work for all till the clock strikes one, which announces the lunch break. Lunch is another ritual followed by assembling on the same dining table. Everyone has the plates laid out, lunches shared, kari, aloo ki sabzi, palak, dal and raita passed around. CWG politics to sports to music is discussed while devouring the food. After wrapping up the lunching, work proceeds till the next and final community coffee intake at 3.15 ish. The last break is a fairly silent affair where everyone is too tired to speak or too anxious for the clock to show five. Finally the gong of respite sounds at 5pm when we all log out of the intranet and switch off computers till the next day of hard work, toil and more coffee.